It took a while to get this posted…but better late than never :)  This season has gone well so far, race highlights being: Personal best time at Green Bay Marathon in May (3:04) and Second Place finish at Rockman Half IM (June 7, 4:44). 

I was actually waiting on photos so this could be an interesting post, but I can’t wait forever!!  Last Sunday I raced a half ironman race (along with fellow Timex team mates Mike Lavery and Will Smith) at beautiful High Cliff State Park (outside of Appleton, WI).  Here’s a recap of the weekend:

Friday (6/19):  I took the day off of work with the idea of leaving early for the race and getting to the campground with time to hike around or relax a bit.  Well…after sleeping in until noon, cleaning the entire house, and doing some yard work the day had quickly gotten away from me.  Soon it was 5:30 and we had a 2 (plus) hour drive….no big deal we’d still get there before dark (barely!)

Despite a long, winding detour and a GPS with a dead battery, we somehow made it to the campground at 8:30.  It had been storming the entire drive, so we immediately checked out the bikes…they looked fine, but were coated nicely in about 1/2 in. layer of sludge.  Awesome.   Anyhow…found the site, got the tent set up…Mike struggled with his a bit, but it went up eventually.  Amazing how the rain-fly belongs on the outside of the tent! :)  Unfortunately with the rain we couldn’t get a fire going so we spent the night burning our race packets and whatever else we could find.  Storms came hard all night…but somehow we managed to stay dry.

Saturday (6/20, race day):  5am came quick, but the weather looked great for the race. 

SWIM- took place in Lake Winnebego, a pretty large lake.  The water was very choppy and I had a very hard time spotting the buoys.  After a little detour off course I found someones feet and rode it pretty much the whole way.  I came out a bit quicker than expected (27:06) considering the conditions.  Had a good T1 and was ready for the ride.

BIKE- This is definitely my weakest section of the race, but usually I can hang in there.  My legs were not feeling great right from the start.  Luckily the course was pretty flat, except for the mile long climb just after transition.  I got passed by Mike at mile 20 (he started 5 waves behind me) and was not feeling so hot at that point.  I think one of the problems was that I never actually looked at a map of the course so had no idea if we were doing an out and back, or loops or what….oops!  I managed to only get passed by one woman at about mile 45.  I pushed to keep her in sight the rest of the way…but my legs were really not coopering.  Anyhow, came off the bike with a mediocre 2:40 (avrg 21.3).

RUN- I spend the last half of the bike portion of any tri thinking about how excited I am to start running.  I love the run and can usually make up some ground on all of the bikers that passed me earlier in the day.  I had a good T2 and took off with my Nathan handheld bottle (very key for the race since it was hot!).  The run started out up the same hill that the bike course did and there was no choice but to walk it.   The first mile was tough, but after that it was all trail running.  As an ex-cross country runner and being semi-injury prone, I run on trails as much as possible…so this was a very enjoyable run for me.  Finished with a 1:32 split for the run.  I’ll take it on a hot day.

Overall time 4:42, First overall.  See full results at : http://www.itiming.com/raceresults/519-high-cliff-tri-half-div09.pdf.    Congrats to Will Smith, overall Men’s winner and Mike Lavery, 3rd overall.  Great showing for Team Timex!